25 January 2008

As of November 2006, only 26 million Americans watched any nightly news program on television (down from 52 million in 1980). And the percentage of people who believed "all or most of what news organizations say" fell dramatically between 1996 and 2006.

On the other hand, social sites like Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us, Technorati, StumbleUpon, Propeller, Newsvine etc., and alternative news websites on both the left and the right have attracted huge numbers of eyeballs. Indeed, there are currently at least 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media.

We are actually on the verge of becoming bigger than the audience for tv news. And we are certainly much more involved and active than the couch potatoes passively consuming the drivel coming from the MSN.

In fact, mainstream news is a misnomer. Why? Because the corporate, controlled news does not reflect the views of mainstream Americans. Instead, it reflects the views of the government and the large corporations which own or advertise on the news networks.

The blogosphere, on the other hand, runs insightful and uncensored stories. The blogsphere gives voice to, and reflects the views of, mainstream America. In other words, I would argue that the blogsphere is now the "mainstream" news source.